The group, which filed a complaint Tuesday with the court, calls the sexual abuse and subsequent coverup “crimes against humanity.” The New York Times reported that the world court would likely discuss whether it has jurisdiction in the matter.

Isely, a therapist, was abused by a priest as a teenager while attending the St. Lawrence Seminary Prep High School near Fond du Lac. A graduate of the Harvard Divinity School and a psychotherapist, Isely is now the Midwest director for SNAP.

“This is a systematic, criminal scandal,” Isely said in a prepared statement. “It requires a systematic, criminal remedy.”

“This violence is enabled by a private hierarchy with global reach. The remedy must involve secular prosecutors with global reach,” he said.
“That’s why we’re formally asking the ICC prosecutor to investigate and then prosecute even a few of the prelates who are responsible for this continuing crisis.”

Isely will be among those who will speak at a press conference at the Hague later today.

The group said it will file an 80-page complaint with the world court on Tuesday. In addition to several Wisconsin cases cited in the complaint, other victims in the Democratic Republic of the Congo list priests from Belgium, India and the United States as abusers.

Benedict XVI was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith before being elected pope in 2005. That Vatican office hears cases of clergy sex abuse. Last year, the Vatican reacted strongly when SNAP linked the pope to the abuse in connection with a Milwaukee case.

Murphy died in 1998, a short time after the Vatican declined to remove him from the priesthood. He headed the school for the deaf from 1950 to 1974.

Court records show that while it took decades for local officials to act against Murphy, Archbishop Rembert Weakland and other bishops from the state attempted to force Murphy from the priesthood but that the Vatican sided with the priest and allowed him to remain a priest.

In addition to the pope, three cardinals are expected to be named in the ICC complaint: William Laveda, the highest ranking American in the church who now heads the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith; Angelo Sodano, dean of the College of Cardinals and former secretary of state; and Tarcisio Bertone, the current secretary of state, considered the second most powerful man in the Vatican.

Efforts to reach the Milwaukee archdiocese for comment Tuesday morning were unsuccessful. The New York Times also had no reaction from the Vatican on Tuesday.